Combat Evolved
by Critical Tortoise
Summary: Somewhere in the far reaches of the Milky Way, one man must do battle on an ancient ringworld with a genocidal collective of aliens known as the Covenant in a desperate gambit to survive. This is not just combat. This is combat evolved.  My own alternate version of Halo: Combat   Evolved.
1. Per Audacia Ad Astra

_**HALO: EPISODE ONE**_

_**PART ZERO: PROLOGUE**_

_**CHAPTER 000-A: PER AUDACIA AD ASTRA**_

It is the year 2552. Humanity has united as one and achieved what had been thought impossible by countless skeptics: scientists, religious leaders, military minds, the citizenry - its has spread past the confines of the solar system and built cities upon alien worlds, it has given itself a new purpose: to boldly go where no man, woman, or child has gone before, to search for the frontiers of our galaxy, to go _per audacia ad astra_.

But this massive paradigm shift in human culture from an amalgamation of war-torn nations fighting for domination to a spacefaring interstellar civilization did not come in the blink of an eye, nor did it come without cost - in both currency and human life.

After the fall of the Third Reich in 1945, the United Nations rose to power, and many looked forward to a future in which the UN would become some kind of super-nation, absorbing and obsoleting the empires of old, replacing them with a world democracy.

When humanity set its sights on the starts in the 20th century, almost the exact opposite happened. The world fragmented into spheres of democratic and communist identities, the United States of America and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics taking center stage in a war without battlefields.

Technology developed at a rapid, almost incomprehensible pace as the world embarked on a blitz towards the new millenium: Computers, automated assembly lines, artificial intelligence, lasers, holography, jet engines, wireless phones, networked electronics, voice recognition, high definition images, hydrogen fuel cells, biotechnology, cybernetics - spaceflight.

Of course, not all these advances were arbitrarily for the good of the people: stealth bombers, infrared cameras, radiological bombs, laser sights, unmanned fighter jets and tanks, laser tripwires, hydrogen bombs, biological warfare.

For the most part advances in military technology were intended to be used to protect the populace, according to the various nation-states of Earth. However, for some, these new tools of destruction were but a means to an end. They were the key to power. They were a way to turn the whole world into one united force of democracy or socialism.

However, as humans expanded to Mars, to Jupiter, to the Moon, to Saturn, to the farthest reaches of where the sun's gravity held sway, so too did these clashing viewpoints, until finally, they ran out of room. One side had to fall, and so became the first war in recorded history to be fought somewhere other than terra firma.

The nations of the world, however, were not powerful enough to defend the Earth. Not alone.

The United Nations Space Command was born - the first united human military force.

The UNSC launched a campaign against the tyrants of the interplanetary void, and in the process tore the world asunder. The Earth and her colonies had been crippled. Humanity was on the brink of ruin. There was nowhere left to go.

So humanity turned to the stars.

In 2291, two scientists made a breakthrough never thought possible, and broke the light barrier. Slipspace, as humanity dubbed this phenomenon, was the gateway to alien worlds ripe for colonization. Humanity was still alone, but no longer would it have to remain cooped up on its homeworld.

Of course, this idyllic future was far too good to be true.

Somewhere in the heavens, they were waiting. Some malevolent force beyond the scope of human comprehension, something terrible, something that would drive us to extinction.

"They" came in the form of a genocidal collective of alien hordes, laughing in alien tongues at our desperate efforts to survive as they wiped or worlds off the face of the galaxy one by one until the present day. They are the instrument of the gods, they are the blade of the cosmos, they are the Covenant.

They have all but destroyed us, and nothing, not even the UNSC can save us.

But there is one thing that might at least buy us time.

It is out there, somewhere in the far reaches of the Milky Way, where one man must do battle against the genocidal hordes of the Covenant in a desperate gambit to survive. But he will need allies. He will need weapons. He will need all the training, all the weapons, all the advantages he can get, for the Covenant do not play fair. They do not relent. They know one goal, one vision: they are hellbent on our eternal damnation, our destruction. They are not fighting a war against us. They are killing us. They are slaughtering us. We are cattle, we are the Jews before Hitler, we are ants under the great cosmic magnifying glass.

This one man must fight with every fiber of his being, with the greatest will to live ever known, for this is not just combat.

This is...

_**COMBAT EVOLVED**_


	2. They've Always Been Faster

_**HALO: EPISODE ONE**_

_**COMBAT EVOLVED**_

_**PART ZERO: PROLOGUE**_

_**CHAPTER 000-B: THEY'VE ALWAYS BEEN FASTER...**_

"Cortana," Keyes said, his eyes shifting slowly across the bridge," all I need to know is did we lose them." Keyes took out the pipe from between his lips, letting the smoke waft across the room and create a nervous aura as he punctuated his sentence by tapping the small alien starship on the screen before him. Letting the silence hang around and intermingle with the smoke, he took his calloused trigger finger from the display and turned towards the knee-high cylindrical holotank to his right, upon which a purple woman made almost entirely of lines of code stood at attention.

She brushed her bangs out of the way of her eyes, giving Keyes a clearer look at the holographic face not unlike that of his very own daughter: a face with deep-set eyes and lips plush and plump as a child's stuffed bear. With a playful smirk to offset her serious tone, the hologram prodded him. "Let's be honest, here, Captain. You already know the answer to that."

He knew that she was right, that he was right. The Covenant was probably right behind, tailing them from the moment they left Reach. Worse still, they might have already figured out their jump vector, and were lying in wait. But that wasn't possible, not even theoretically. There was no way for the Covenant to predict a random vector unless they had access to the ship's computers. There simply wasn't any way for it to happen.

Keyes swiped his hand down the display before him, shoving the windows and readouts to the bottom like loose papers in a cubicle. His eyes drifted back up to the magnificence before him: a mighty silver ring frozen in space, with an interior that looked as if some ancient god had ripped away part of the Earth's surface and placed it into the two hundred mile metallic trench. On the outer wall of the ring, between glowing blue lights trailing across the metal surface and the numerous little towers, repair bays, and what appeared to be turrets the size of the _Autumn _herself, Keyes saw a reflection of a dozen bulbous shapes, like drops of liquid mercury, hanging out from behind the planet.

He shut his eyes and lowered his head. There was no mistaking the Covenant battlecruisers waiting for them.

"We made a blind jump," he said. "How did they-"

"Get here first?" interrupted Cortana. "I think it's quite obvious. They've always been faster."

"I know, I know. But how did they know where we are... where we went?" asked Keyes, pacing back and forth as he examined the _Autumn's_ jump trajectory on the holoscreen before him, cranking up the display's opacity setting so he could pretend, if only briefly, that he wasn't in the presence of his enemies.

"Well, it wouldn't have been that hard to track us, frankly. At light speed, my maneuvering options were rather... limited. With us being so close to Earth, we had our backs against the wall, Captain. It's not like I was able to turn back and run."

"But we _were _running dark, yes?"

"Well, we _were._ Until we made the final jump. Nobody could've missed the hole we tore in Slipspace, Captain. I'd guess that they somehow managed to enter alongside us, and that their engines allowed them to pull ahead," Cortana said, watching as Keyes attempted to distract himself - or possibly get a better grasp of the situation- by making his way to the stations of various crewmen, peeking over their shoulders, watching the lights of their screens.

"So where do we stand?" he asked, walking to the bridge's main window and staring down. Before him was a chaotic storm of plasma and fire, with Seraphs and Longswords racing past each other like mosquitoes. He took his pipe out of his mouth once more, shaking off the bits of ash that had collected at its end.

"Our fighters are mopping up the last of the recon picket now," Cortana said. The swarm of starfighters was beginning to die down. "Nothing too serious."

Keyes relaxed a bit, replacing his pipe, only for Cortana to provide him with a rather infuriating caveat:

"...But I've isolated approach signatures from multiple CCS-class battle groups, make it three capital ships per group... And in about ninety seconds, they're gonna be all over us."

"Well, that's it, then. Bring the ship back up to Combat Alert Alpha. I want everyone at their stations," Keyes punctuated with a sweep of his arm, an arc of pipe smoke billowing out from in front of his face.

"Everyone, sir?" Cortana questioned him.

"Everyone."

Cortana nodded and turned away from Keyes, towards the screen, before she paused. "And how do you expect me to wake them?" she said, gesturing to a vague direction somewhere below them.

"At least him, then. We can deal with her later."

The bridge was suddenly bathed in a red strobing glow, the crew covering their ears from the panicked screaming of the alarm klaxon: **beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep beep**, as if it were spewing out a stream of curses, **oh fuck you're going to die**, over and over, but despite - or maybe because of the jarring atmosphere of pandemonium, Keyes said coolly:

"And Cortana... make sure to give our friends a warm welcome."


	3. Reveille

_**HALO**_

_**The Unofficial Novelization**_

_**EPISODE ONE: COMBAT EVOLVED**_

_Chapter I_

_Reveille_

_The Master Chief awoke, expecting to hear the sound of the reveille, precisely at 0600 hours, but there was only the sound of steam pouring out from under him. For a moment, he was able to recall his now-faded dream._

_He was sitting there, back on Reach, staring at Linda as she put two fingers over her visor: the SPARTAN gesture for "smile." He returned the gesture, waving goodbye to the now sleeping beauty as he awaited his turn to go into cryo. He could remember his last words:_

_"Wake me, when you need me..."_

_"Wake me..."_

The Chief could see a blurry outline of a human, clad in a yellow standard-issue Navy jumpsuit. A crewman of the UNSC _Pillar of Autumn_. The man was tapping away at a small console beside the cryo-tube, his eyes darting back and forth between the Chief and another crewman in a small glass booth suspended above on the wall in front of him.

He inspected the mouths of the crewman, and could read: _"He's hot! Blowing the pins in five..."_

More steam erupted from the sides of the now-open pod.

The Chief's vision returned ever-slowly, revealing the crewman's faded nametag. The Chief squinted, barely able to make out the words **TECH CHIEF SHEPARD** emblazoned on the tag, even with the aid of his MJOLNIR battlesuit's in-built magnification capabilities.

Quickly giving the Chief a sharp salute, Shepard apologized, "Sorry for the quick thaw, Master Chief... Really, I am. It's just that things are... well, since we left Reach, they've been a little hectic."

The man in the box tapped his microphone, giving off a disorienting screech. "A _little_? That's the understatement of the century... But don't worry about Shepard's misinformation, sir. We'll have you battle-ready stat."

Noting the apparent concern of the crewman, the Chief simply remained on his back, awaiting the signal to get up. He wanted to be battle ready as soon as he could. The Covenant couldn't be allowed even the smallest opportunity to attack while he was off-guard. Meanwhile, Shepard reached for a small clipboard resting on the console, and said, "Chief, please look around the room, would you kindly? I need to get a reading for your battlesuit's diagnostics and helmet-cam."

The Chief inspected his surroundings, noting the locations of the exits... and the fact that Linda was in the pod next to him, yet to be awakened. Motioning to her with his head, the chief asked Shepard, "Is something wrong?"

The crewman gave the SPARTAN a puzzled look for a split-second, then emitted a great gasp, almost as if the Chief should have known. No, not _almost_, that he _should have known_. That he _did_ know. "Sir... you don't remember?"

Of course he didn't remember. He didn't ask questions he already knew the answer to.

The man in the booth stepped away from the microphone, leaning back in his chair to bury his head in his hands.

"No. I don't... Did... did something happen on Reach?"

Shepard nodded solemnly. "Sir.. You were with her... She was hit by some plasma pistol shots and... Her vitals flatlined. You're the one who insisted that we get her into cryo and see if Doctor Halsey could fix 'er up... But, uh... Doctor Halsey, well... never came back. After Noble Six delivered Cortana to the _Autumn_, I'm not sure if anyone saw her. I guess that she went to some other ONI base or something.

"Did you hit you head sir? You should have... remembered..."

_Damn_, thought the Chief. They needed Linda. _He_ needed Linda.

Trying to change the topic of the "conversation," Shepard went back to the rather unorthodox wake-up call for the Chief. "Uh... Thank you sir.. I'm bringing your health monitors online." The Chief glanced up at the top-center section of his visor, where several blue rectangles appeared on his Heads-Up Display. Checking off something on his clipboard, Shepard announced to the Chief, "Vital signs look normal; no freezer burn. Okay sir, go ahead and climb out of the cryo-tube."

Grabbing onto the metallic edge, the Chief lifted himself out of his cold metallic prison, now free to roam around the country (or at least to roam around the cryo bay).

A crackling noise rang in the ears of both the Chief and Shepard as the microphone in the booth crackled back to life. Ignoring the noise, Shepard continued, "I gave you a double-dose of the wake-up stim, sir. Just take a quick walk around the cryo bay and join me at the optical diagnostics station when you're ready."

Nodding, the Chief paced between the rows of cryo-pods, eventually arriving in front of a wall with a large cross on it; each tip of which had an orange-colored infrared sensor on it. Presumably, the Chief had to lock onto each of these sensors by aligning them with the neurally-linked targeting reticule on his visor. In preparation for the testing and lock-on calibration, he stepped onto the red square indented into the bay floor.

"I know the ordnance techs usually take care of your targeting sensors, but we're short of time, Chief. Just look at each of the flashing panels to target them. When ya lock on, it'll change color," confirmed Shepard, motioning to the sensors with his clipboard.

The Chief focused and aligned his reticule with each sensor, one at a time. He could have simply looked directly at them, as Shepard had told him, but he realized that he wouldn't have that opportunity in battle, so he used his thoughts to position the reticule. It was simple, really: Think "up" to move it up, think "down" to move it down, and think "left" to go left, and "right" to go right.

"Okay, that looks good," mumbled Shepard as he lazily checked off something on the clipboard.

The bay intercom whined again as the man in the booth tapped the microphone, a puzzled expression on his face. "Uh, sir... I'm getting some calibration errors," he reported, tapping some commands into the console in front of him, "I'm going to invert your targeting pitch and see if you like it better that way."

The Chief felt his brain pulsate as it was loaded with new sensory information from the SPARTAN neural interface in the back of his cranium.

"Try targeting the flashing lights again," continued the man in the booth.

The Chief found that it was suddenly difficult to manipulate the targeting reticule on his visor and lock onto the sensors, as he now had to try moving the reticule up to move it down, and vice-versa. Of course, he wouldn't have that problem when holding a firearm. His suit of MJOLNIR Mark V powered armor had sensors in the gloves, helmet, torso and arms that recognized the model of the weapon he was holding, how much ammunition he was carrying, and where the bullets would go. Because of this, the visor took away manual control of the reticule (at least, by default it did) and positioned it not where he was looking, but where he was aiming. Still, he wouldn't always have a weapon in his hands and raised...

"Uh… is that better, or should I switch it back, sir?"

"Switch it back," the Chief answered, shaking his head.

The man in the booth nodded, entering a few more commands into the console. "Okay, I'll leave the pitch set to normal. But if you want, you can change it yourself later." He scooted his chair over to the other console behind him, flipping several switches, all of which seemed important... and were revealed by the Chief's visor to all be unlabeled. The man then turned his chair back around to face the Chief and Shepard, and he reported: "I'm ready for the energy shield test, now..."

The Chief's attention immediately snapped to Shepard, who was walking towards a narrow black arch attached to a generator, a motor, and several glowing yellow plates that didn't look very, well... isafe./i

"Follow me to the energy shield test station, Chief. We need to get those babies online," Shepard recited.

The intercom in the bay crackled to life once more, this time blasting out the calm, yet diligent voice of Cortana, the _Autumn_'s shipboard AI... and the closest thing the Chief had to a best friend, ever since Sam died. _"Fire teams: Report to defensive positions Alpha through Sierra. Sensors show inbound Covenant boarding craft. Standby to repel boarders,"_ she said through the intercom as the Chief stepped under the arch.

Shepared nodded to the crewman in the booth, who entered yet more commands into the console. Suddenly, the Chief found himself surrounded by several glowing rings of yellow light as a long blue bar appeared over his health monitor in the top-center of his visor. The bar slowly filled up, indicating his shields were nearing one-hundred percent integrity.

"Okay, shields read as fully charged... Now we're gonna bring them down to test the automatic recharge," Shepard told him.

The Chief braced for the recoil of the shields overloading to the brink of non-existence; locking his knees.

The bar on his visor emptied nearly instantly and flashed red, the word **WARNING** appearing in the center of the bar. After about three seconds, however, the beeping the Chief heard when his shields were depleted slowly turned to a low-pitched, continuous ring as the bar filled up from the center.

"Recharging normal. Showing green across the board. Now we just need to calibra-" announced the crewman in the booth, until he was cut off by another broadcast on the bay's intercom: a broadcast from Captain Keyes himself.

"Bridge to Cryo Two, this is Captain Keyes. Send the Master Chief to the bridge immediately."

"Captain, we'll have to skip the weapons diagnostics, and I-"

"_On the double_, crewman."

Shepard turned to the Chief, a grim look on his face. "Aye aye, sir... Ugh, skipper seems jumpy. Better get moving, we'll find you weapons later."

The crewman in the box was panicking. "Okay, I'll leave the self diagnostics running, at least."

"Good idea," said Shepard, giving the crewman a thumbs-up as he began walking to the door. "You'd better get to your evac group, Sam!"

"Affirmative. Just have to reset the computer and I'm outta here!"

Suddenly, a harsh banging sound came from the chamberlock beside the crewman in the box. The Chief could see the dents in the door rapidly growing in size and number.

"Oh God, they- they'r trying to get through the door! Security! Intruders in Cryo Two! Covenant in Cryo Two!" yelled the crewman as a tall, reptilian alien clad in blue armor burst into the box and opened fire with his plasma rifle. "No, please, don't shoot! Please, no! NO!"

The Master Chief could no nothing more than look on in horror as fine red steam erupted from the glowing holes in the crewman's body: It was what little blood escaped from the wound before it was cauterized by the heat of the plasma.

A primal _"Wort wort wort!"_ echoed from the box as the glass cracked form the alien punching it repeatedly to attempt to kill the Chief.

"Sam! SAM!"

Shepard turned once more to the Chief and drew his M6G PDW, the standard-issue sidearm of the UNSC Navy. "C'mon, we've got to get the hell out of here!"

_This is gonna be a long day, _thought the Chief.

**A/N:**

**(WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!)**

**So…. this is my novelization of Halo: Combat Evolved! No, I'm sure you noticed several differences between this chapter and the game/official novel, so let me explain.**

**I am a die-hard Halo fan. I have several Halo action figures, Halo, Halo 2, Halo: Reach (I only just got a 360), and one of the novels (Yeah, that might not SEEM die-hard, but I'm poor. Cut me some slack. Gawd.)**

**I know the Halo canon. This is not Halo canon…. totally.**

**Here's why:**

**I haven't gotten a chance to read **_**Halo: The Flood **_**by William C. Dietz. I've only read the **_**Halo Graphic Novel **_**(part of it, anyway) and **_**Halo: First Strike**_** by Eric Nylund. So if there are differences between this and the novel….. oh well. Besides, this is a FAN NOVELIZATION. IT SHOULDN'T BE THE SAME.**

**I wanted this to be more that just putting the game into prose, so I've added a few things for the sake of more story/action/more opportunities to get better at writing, such as having Linda in the cryo-bay, which brings me to my third point…**

**THIS NOVELIZATION CONTAINS RETCONS. Yeah, I know Bungie doesn't like retconning, but I AM NOT BUNGIE. I NEVER WILL BE BUNGIE (sadly). I did this because after I played Reach, some things just didn't make sense to me… For instance…. Why doesn't Cortana ever mention Noble Six? (I know this is because Noble Six hadn't been created yet by Bungie, I'm saying this from a story standpoint based on what we know now, plus some conjecture.) Why do the Marines on the Autumn use MA5B assault rifles instead of the MA37? And furthermore, should that be called the MA5A? Why are there no ODST's in game? How did Guilty Spark know the Chief was on the ring? Stuff like that.**

**So anyway…. this also means that for the sake of having some original content, I've added a few new things. For instance….. **

**-The Chief will meet the Arbiter face-to-face during this novelization.**

**-There will be some elements not seen in the game, such as the fact that the chapters covering the first level of the game will include a rendition of the CMT custom campaign.**

**-Linda will play a role in the story.**

**-Brutes!**

**-And other things, don't wanna spoil much else. Already spoiled too much.**

**Anyway, I'm also a serious writer, and hope to be a full-time novelist someday, but for now, I settle for my creative writing class at school, writing short stories in my spare time, and poetry, so please, make sincere comments. Tell me about my writing style more that you tell me about my knowledge of Halo canon. This is not a TRUE novelization because it adds several elements to the plot, but overall the ideas and characters remains the same. Okay? Okay. **

**And another thing: The chapters roughly correspond to the chapters in the game (the chapters are when the screen goes to letter box and it shows a title, such as "Rolling Thunder", "AI Constructs and Cyborgs First!", or "Breaking Stuff to Look Tough".**

**And as evidenced by the fact that it says "HALO: EPISODE ONE" at the beginning, this is going to be a trilgoy of "novels," covering the main trilogy of games:**

**Episode One: Combat Evolved (Halo CE)**

**Episode Two: The Great Journey (Working Title, Halo 2)**

**Episode Three: Believe (Halo 3)**

**(I do not have any plans at the moment to do Reach, Hal Wars, or ODST.)**

**Anyway, sorry for the long Author's Note; Chapter Two is coming soon to a computer near you!**


	4. Get to the Choppa I

_**CHAPTER II - GET TO THE CHOPPA, PART ONE**_

_Shepard busted into a frenzied sprint, fumbling with the keypad as he tapped in the code to open the cryo bay doors._

"THIS WAY!"

The Chief looked around in shock at recent events until he stumbled over to the door, following Shepard, who was heading straight to a door near a busted fuel tank. "Shepard!" he shouted.

Shepard turned round for a brief moment, motioning for the Chief to follow him, only to be burning to death moments later.

The Chief hesitated, creeping towards Shepard's charred body. For a split second, he contemplated picking up the crewman and attempting to find a medic, but he decided against it and simply stood there.

_No... He couldn't have survived_, thought the Chief as he looked at Shepard's blackened flesh. He took a moment of silence to honor the fallen man before him, yet another victim of the war.

All the Chief wanted was for it to be over; for the fight to be finished. _But no_, he thought. They were just getting started. Picking himself back up, the Chief turned to the left to face a gas main in a small corridor. It wasn't more than a foot off the ground at the top, and the ceiling was high enough that he could simply jump over it- a feat made all too easy by his MJOLNIR armor.

He darted through the corridors of the ship until he came across a half-opened blast door. Through the opening, the Chief could see a firefight going on in the hallway. Plasma bolts zipped through the air and boiled through the ship's walls and barricades as several crewman returned fire with their M6G sidearms.

"Behind us! They're right behind us!" screamed crewman that turned around, only to have his face turns into a charred black mess, with a fine red steam erupting from the now-cauterized impact wounds.

The Master Chief gagged at the sight of the steam. He never was able to get used to that. He was always told that plasma wounds weren't supposed to bleed- and they didn't. Instead, for the most part, they left the victim horribly disfigured. Sometimes, however, when hit in the right place, with a certain amount of plasma (such as blood-rich areas like the head and upper torso), a little blood would escape from the wound during the split-second it wasn't cauterized, and the heat of the air and plasma would boil it, turning into a fine red steam. It would linger there for a few seconds, but with all the blood you see as a soldier, you would think the Master Chief was used to it. But he wasn't. He never was.

Another pair of crewmen sprinted into the room, ducking and narrowly avoid getting their flesh burned off. "Secure those blast doors!" said the one in front. "Move! _Move!_"

A yell could be heard in the distance, on the other side of the blast door. "Wait for me!" it said.

The Master Chief and the crewmen in the hall turned their attention to the hail of plasma bolts and the now-closing blast door, behind which was a squad of the reptilian Covenant Elites, clad in their almost shark-like blue armor, plus a horrified crewman. A bright blue sphere arced through the air and stuck to the crewman's face. "No… NO! NO! FUCK! GET IT OFF! GET-GET-GETITOFF! HURRYHURRYHURRYBEF-"

The last thing anyone ever heard from behind that blast door was a high-pitched whining sound, then an explosion. Then silence.

The Chief, temporarily distracted by the death of the crewman, was brought back to his stoic facade when the man who appeared to be in charge of the crewmen in the hall said to him, "Master Chief, sir, the situation's... Well, secure, for the most part. You're probably needed somewhere else."

The Master Chief nodded and continued into the next corridor.

Cortana's voice blasted through the intercom. _"Alert! All hands, boarding parties on port decks Four, Seven, and Twelve. Baker Team move to engage."_

The Master Chief turned to his left after walking forward several meters. There was a shadow behind the next door, outlined by the ghostly red alarms light. He braced himself for anything and crept through the door to be greeted by yet another Elite.

It pointed at him and screamed the signature battle cry of the Elites, sounding something like, "Wort wort wort!"

Before either he or the alien could react, however, the sound of rifle fire rang from behind the alien warrior, and a thin purple-ish liquid bled from its stomach. Using this brief interlude between the towering reptile's assaults as an opportunity to attack, the Chief executed a near-flawless uppercut too the alien's head.

The alien warrior began to groan in pain as it struggled to get up. The Chief could see its hooves shaking. However, they were not the only things shaking: two greenhorn marines were trembling in admiration for the man before them: Master Chief Petty Officer John-117.

The Marine who had fired his rifle; a short, stocky Asian man with a round face, yet toned muscles, uttered a single deadpan "whoa" at the sight of the SPARTAN-II.

"I could… use a little help here…" said the Chief, who was pinned to a wall by the now-upright Elite.

The Marines, however, were both speechless, and in response, the Chief got nothing but the Elite's menacing snarl…

**A/N: Decided against including the CMT campaign elements. Also, pressed for time, so I'll be releasing the next chapter later than I thought. Sorry for the huge wait time for this one!**


	5. Get to the Choppa II

_**CHAPTER III**_

_**GET TO THE CHOPPA, PART TWO**_

_Slowly, the Elite raised its right arm, grinning as it drooled in a twisted lust for blood. The Master Chief, for the first time since arriving on Reach, felt fear. But not just any fear, oh no, he had felt fear many times over. This fear was real. This was fear that could breach his stoic façade._

The Master Chief was face-to-face with an opponent who had never known defeat, who laughed in alien tongues at his efforts to survive. This was suicide. Realizing that fact, he looked to the Elite's arm, from which a small triangular blade of pure energy was emanating. "Help me," he said to the Asian man and his bumbling American cohort, who both aimed their MA37 rifles at the Elite's back.

A dark purple liquid splattered across the Chief's visor, leaving him temporarily blind.

"Good work, men," he congratulated as he got away from the alien corpse.

"Chief, Cortana says to get to the bridge-"

"I know that, Marine. Just…. stay here. Make sure nothing gets past here again."

"Yes, sir."

With that, the Master Chief left the hallway. Throughout the seemingly empty corridors, there echoed the voice of Cortana, the ship's AI, shouting out orders and reports. "_Alert! Alpha and Charlie Teams report heavy fighting on port decks Five through Nine. Foxtrot Team move to starboard decks Eight and Ten, and stand by."_

Eventually, after several minutes of peace, the Master Chief arrived at a barricade where several Marines were holding their ground with M6D pistols, looking at the doorways as if waiting for someone… as if waiting for him. The Marine among the crewman looked at the Chief, and unlike the two Marines that helped him fight off the Elite, he seemed to be able to stay calm, cool, and collected in front of not just a commanding officer, but a SPARTAN-II at that. There were still stress lines on his face, however. This man was most likely a veteran. He could be a great asset were he to stay with the Chief.

"Sir, Captain Keyes needs you on the bridge A.S.A.P.! Better follow me!" announced the trooper as he ran into the next room over. They both stepped over several wounded Marines, crying out in pain as they clutched their charred flesh. Some were looking at the Chief with a wild expression on their face, as if the Chief were some Jesus-like figure with the ability to turn water to wine and to heal plasma scoring and radiation burns. Others simply sat there in some bewildered catatonic state; their eyes affixed to their dying friends and brothers as their blood boiled.

The Chief bit his lip in anxiety. _No... no. I have to keep moving, _he thought to himself. He broke free of the hypnotic gaze of the dead and followed the still-standing Marine.

The Marine almost opened his mouth to say something, hoping to make the Chief feel at least somewhat normal, but he felt it wasn't exactly the greatest idea ever.

_"When in doubt, shut the fuck up and just keep shooting." That was the Marine's creed._

However, one small though _did _manage to break free of its cage: the Marine stood silent for a moment alongside the chief and wondered if the little orange Covies with the huge triangular backs (he couldn't for the life of him remember what they were called) did the same thing.

Hell, they probably didn't even really see why they had to kill humans. They probably just wanted to be left alone; to live in peace on their own planet.

Such hopeful musings the Marine had circling around in his head! Such silly, stupid thoughts! There was no such thing as a monster that didn't like to hide in closets...

And so the Chief and the Marine continued to the bridge.

The Chief stepped onto the slightly raised metal flooring of the bridge, somewhat eager to find out what the Captain wanted. It was almost like a child waiting to see what they got for Christmas.

Like waiting to open that brand-new gravball your parents got for you.

The Chief's memories of his childhood with his parents back on Eridanus II promptly were shoved into the back of his mind, where they belonged. He couldn't afford to be reminiscing about gravball. Right now he had to be focused on the fact that there was a mission at stake here.

He cleared his throat and casually –but with an air of purpose, no doubt- walked past the crewman n their seats at their respective consoles, all trying to resist the temptation to glance back at the SPARTAN among them and try to do something so out-of-context as ask to shake his hand, unaware of the iron grip provided by not only the suit of MJOLNIR armor he was wearing, but the augmentations he received as a child. They didn't know he could quite easily break every single bone in their body, plus one. For their own good, however, they largely ignored him, evident by the fact that most were still running to their battlestations.

In front of the main viewscreen was Captain Jacob Keyes, the man in charge of not only Master Chief, but the whole ship. He hadn't yet noticed the Chief; he was still too busy smoking his old tobacco pipe.

The Master Chief cleared his throat, causing Keyes to turn and face him. "Captain Keyes..."

Keyes extended a hand, to which the Chief responded by shaking it. He had a look which was somewhat of disappointment or melancholia; the look you had on your face when you realized you were about to die, but that you had one last moment to see your friends and family with. The expression melted away however, once Keyes put his pipe down on the console by the viescreen and greeted the Chief. "Good to see you Master Chief. Things, well... they aren't going well. Cortana did her best, but I'm afraid we never really had a chance."

Just then, Cortana's glowing purple figure flickered into existence on top of the holotank to Keyes' right. "A dozen Covenant superior battleships against a single _Halcyon-_class Cruiser," she said matter-of-factly, "Given those odds, I'm content with three-"

A explosion could be heard in the background at that moment.

Cortana chuckled. "-Make that _four _kills. Sleep well?"

"No thanks to your driving, yes," replied the Chief.

"So ya _did_ miss me."

Suddenly, plasma fire raced across the window in front of the bridge, its bright purple glow eating away at the metallic hull of the _Autumn. _The Master Chief began to speak, but was interrupted by another explosion, this time rocking the floors of the _Autumn. _

"REPORT!" yelled Keyes.

With a concerned look on her face and a worried tone, Cortana said, "It must have been one of their boarding parties! I'd guess an antimatter charge!"

A voice came from behind them; that of another crewman. "Ma'am! Fire control to the main mass driver is offline! We're sitting ducks!"

"Captain, the cannon was my last defensive option."

Keyes hesitated for a moment, then turned to Cortana's holotank. "All right then," he sighed. "I'm initiating Cole Protocol, Article Two... We're abandoning the-"

"While you do _what_, go down with the ship?" interrupted Cortana.

"-_Autumn_... And yes, in a manner of speaking. The object we found. I'm going to try to land the _Autumn_ on it."

"With all due respect sir, this war has enough dead heroes."

"I... appreciate your concern, Cortana, but it's not up to me. Protocol is _clear:_

_"Destruction of capture of a shipboard AI is absolutely unacceptable._ That means you're leaving the ship. Lock in a selection of emergency landing zones, upload them to my neural lace, and then sort yourself for a hard transfer."

"Aye aye, sir."

"Which is where _you_come in, Chief. Get Cortana off this ship! Keep her safe from the enemy! If they capture her, they'll learn everything: Force deployment, weapons research…

"Earth."

"I understand," replied the Chief.

Cortana appeared before the two men once more. "The _Autumn _will continue evasive maneuvers until you initiate a landing sequence, Captain. Not that you'll listen, but I'd suggest letting my subroutines handle the dirty work of the final approach on the ring."

"Excellent work, Cortana. Thank you…. Are you ready?"

Cortana looked about the bridge for a moment, then sighed. "Yank me."

Several beeping noises came from the holotank as Keyes uploaded Cortana to her data chip. Handing the chip to the Chief, he said, "Good luck, Master Chief."

A slight echoing _ping _resonated in the Master Chief's helmet as he inserted the data chip.

_"Hmm… your suit's architecture isn't that much different from the _Autumn's…"

"Don't get any funny ideas," whispered the Chief.

"Oh, and one more thing:" shouted Keyes as the Chief made his way off the bridge.

"Sir?"

The Master Chief reached out his hand to salute Keyes, but it was intercepted by the Captain's M6D Chief, realizing Keyes' intent, took the pistol, knowing full well that it would leave Keyes defenseless in the event of a direct assault on the bridge.

_Hmm. I guess when it comes to defense priority, _the Chief thought, _it's AI constructs and cyborgs first!_

_

* * *

_

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: Guess I released this sooner than I thought.**

**Oh, and those of you wondering... he next chapter might be split into two parts like this one. Also, yeah, this is when Linda comes into the story.**

**Eventually, the Elites will speak English when Master Chief gets translation software found on the ring.**

**This is in my opinion my best chapter yet (though there's only three, so that's not sayng much.)**


	6. AI Constructs and Cyborgs First!

_**fanCHAPTER IV**_

"_**AI CONSTRUCTS AND CYBORGS FIRST!"**_

"_I… don't keep it loaded, son; you'll have to find ammo as you go." Keyes informed the Chief, rushing his speech in a panic as he stared at the ring before him._

The Chief stood there for a moment, not sure what to do. Should he give back the pistol? Surely Keyes needed it. After all, he was an aging war veteran, who, if captured by the Covenant, wouldn't be able to hold out for long, though as he was. The Chief, however, was still in his prime, not to mention his heavy armor and energy shields. He opened his mouth to say something, and he could tell Keyes knew what he was thinking.

"Just _go, _John," he insisted.

_John. _

_The Chief's birth name. Nobody ever called him that anymore, except for Johnson and Halsey. But Halsey was dead, and Johnson hadn't been anywhere near him in a few weeks. He was starting to wonder if he was still a soldier. If he was just some faceless armored warrior, serving one purpose: kill._

_ This, however, assured him: he had to finish this fight._

"Yeah, sure, Captain. I mean… Yes, sir."

The Chief turned away from Keyes (after, of course, saluting him), and ran out of the room. He kept running, his boots clanging and resonating against the cold steel of the corridor floor; the sounds resonating and echoing within his ears. Patting his hip with his armored hands and making sure his M6D was securely in place; kept affixed to his hip by the magnets in his suit, the Chief scanned the floors and weapons racks for any extra pistol magazines.

That irritating red glow in the upper-right corner of his visor; that great big zero above the M6D's icon… it pissed him off. A lot.

Suddenly, he was jolted out of his musings by his TACCOM's helmet speaker. Who the hell could be hailing him?

_"You know, you could have simply _asked _for some ammo," _Cortana quipped, laughing at the Chief's quite obvious mistake.

Of course. _Her. _Of all people, why did _she_ have to be the one talking to him? Ever since he met her on Reach, she had been nothing but an irritant: saying obvious things about enemy troops, constantly trying to be _funny, _or something… Granted, he was glad to have someone talking to him that wasn't telling him about his orders and whatnot, but enough was enough. He _certainly _wasn't going to let Cortana embarrass him like that. Yes, it was true he hadn't thought of that, but in any case, she wasn't about to find out. "I didn't want to take any of their ammo… they needed it more than me, after all."

In his embarrassment, the Chief started to walk faster. That is, until he heard… sniffing.

_"I hear something," _Cortana told him.

"No shit, Sherlock."

The Chief pressed his back to the wall, peeking around the corner to catch a glimpse of what was to come. He heard more sniffing, and then footsteps. Small, light footsteps. There was no denying it: there was a Grunt nearby.

Of course, Cortana took this as an opportunity to continue bonding with the Chief. "Yeah, and that Grunt just wants a hug. Lucky for you, however, before you started to lie to me, I started using your helmet's visual feed to look of anything you missed. Now step back three meters and look down."

Sure enough, there it was: a packet of .45 rounds, already in some M6D magazines. He picked up the plastic baggy; holding it upside-down and tearing off the small orange tab. Three full magazines fell onto the floor in front of him. He picked up the first one and shoved it into the grip of the M6D. Looking at the ammunition readout on his visor, he noticed that the magazine indicator was flashing orange: It wasn't inserted properly.

He sighed, giving the magazine a loud smack as he cocked his weapon, making sure to chamber the first round.Subsequently, all twelve of the little blue bullets on his visor lit up.

A yelp came from the corridor off to the side in response to the noise of the pistol being loaded, and a small, red-eyed, gas mask-adorned head poked out through the doorway. The Master Chief moved his weapon, the small reticule moving to match the calculated point of impact of the bullet. It turned red as it passed over the alien soldier's mask, indicating a hostile had been targeted. In a fumbled movement of retaliation, the alien produced a high-pitched, Darth Vader-like wheezing as it procured its plasma pistol from its holster. In twisted mockery of a Western gunslinger, the alien cackled and squeezed the pressure-sensitive trigger of its weapon; a large green sphere of ionized gas accumulating at the pistol's emitters. The pistol began to shake as it was overcharged, leaving the alien to struggle with positioning the sights of the pistol at level with the Chief's stomach.

Then…

There was the sound of thunder! A pocket-sized, deadly _boom _of thunder!

A bullet on the magazine indicator in the Chief's visor darkened, just as the muzzle of the Chief's M6D brightened.

A stream of methane shot out of the feral alien's gas mask, and a thick, soupy blue liquid seeped out of the wound in its head.

"That's for Reach," quipped the Chief as he wiped the methane droplets off his pistol. He picked up the other two remaining magazines, still keeping his pistol held out with one hand. Two more gunshots rang out, and two more alien corpses fell to the floor.

What was more important, however, was that once he slipped the other two magazines into the pack on his waist, the Chief no longer had to look at that _damn glaring ZERO _in the corner of his visor; it having been replaced by a nice '24.'

_Okay. That's taken care of, _thought the Chief.

"Which way?"

"Just head through the door the Grunts came from. That leads to the mess hall," Cortana told him.

The Chief nodded, dashing past the dead Grunts on the floor. He hesitated, however, when he heard assault rifle fire, combined with the screams of Marines and a fierce _"Wort wort wort! Ogelmar!" _ After all, he didn't want to die.

Taking this into account, the Chief decided to use a stealthy approach; crouching down and sneaking into the mess hall. However, an Elite noticed him and turned its plasma repeater to him. What seemed like dozens upon dozens of blue bolts of ionized gas whizzed past the Chief's head; narrowly missing his body, but grazing his shields. The Chief looked up at the solid blue bar in the top-center of his visor, watching almost helplessly as the ends shrank back towards the middle until the bar turned red and a glaring **WARNING **appeared in the middle.

In a futile attempt to fight back, the Chief raised his M6D once more, firing all nine remaining rounds in the magazine, which miraculously brought down the Elite.

His troubles, however, were not over yet, as three Marines could be seen off to the side, taking cover behind tables and vending machines as the remaining Covenant soldiers in the mess –an Ultra Elite and several Grunts– opened fire.

He didn't have enough ammo to take them all down. Diving back into the cover of the hallway, the Chief waited for his shields to recharge, a bright yellow glow of particles enveloping him as the shield's integrity was restored. In desperation, the Master Chief scoured the hall until he came across a dead Marine and his MA5A assault rifle, plus six magazines.

Picking up the rifle and magazines, the Chief rolled out from the hallway and unloaded into the Elite.

Hearing even more rifle fire, the Marines turned around and saw the SPARTAN-II fighting alongside them: they were completely dumbstruck. "Holy shit! A SPARTAN!" yelled one.

"We're saved!" yelled another.

The Elite, however, once it noticed who its newfound foe was, shouted and took up a fighting stance, planting its hooves firmly onto the floor as it whipped out its energy sword.

The Master Chief shouted in frustration, _"Fuck!" _

_ "You might want to run," _Cortana told him.

The Chief nodded, his heart racing and his blood boiling with adrenaline as the Elite charged towards him. He tried is best to run, but the Elite was clearly an Ultra for a reason: it knocked over tables with a single shove, jumping on top of them and pouncing on its prey.

The Ultra swung its sword from left to right, giving the Chief just barely enough time to duck down. Sparks from the recently-cut vending machine flew in all directions, many of them showering upon the Master Chief, causing his shields to flare up in a brilliant storm of yellow energy.

Enraged that the Chief had dodged its initial assault, the Ultra drew its plasma rifle and fired a burst of bolts at the Chief's head.

Cortana yelled into the Master Chief's TACCOM. _"Keep your head down! There's two of us in here now, remember?" _

His shields down and plasma boiling through the back of his MJOLNIR battlesuit, the Master Chief vaulted over a table, using these precious seconds to reload his M6D and empty a magazine into the Ultra. "Did I kill it?"

As if to answer his question, the Ultra's sword jabbed through the table, cutting through it like an Olympic swimmer through water.

His shields having partially recharged, the Chief (rather stupidly, one might add) grabbed the tip of the energy sword, yanking it out of the Ultra's hand and turning it against its wielder, driving the blade through one of the Ultra's hearts.

With the Ultra dead, the Chief picked his MA5A back up, eliminating the Grunts with a full magazine.

The Chief took this moment of (relative) silence to think about what he had done. _Two rifle mags gone already, and I'm almost out of ammo for my pistol… Guess I learned a lesson today: never burn money._


	7. Never Burn Money I

_**COMBAT EVOLVED**_

_**CHAPTER V, PART ONE**_

"_**NEVER BURN MONEY"**_

_ "Well, you handled that pretty well," Cortana said to the Chief, proud of his brave fight against the Ultra… and nervous about the breach in his armor caused by him (rather stupidly, in her opinion) grabbing the Ultra's energy sword._

The Master Chief's eyes wandered down to his left hand, where he saw a glowing orange-hot cut through the metal of his MJOLNIR armor. The plating of the armor had partially melted; leaving the armor to bubble and boil ever-so-slightly. The stinging of the heat, mixed with the even worse stinging (actually, whether it was worse that the heat was debatable) of the biofoam a medic had just injected into his hand made him bite his tongue in pain.

He didn't want to have another outburst like he did when fighting the Ultra.

The Chief just couldn't help but scream out "FUCK" at the top of his lungs. It was unprofessional, yes, but what else was he going to do? He can't keep such a stoic, rock-solid façade of fearlessness up constantly. After all, he was only human.

A genetically and cybernetically enhanced human, at any rate.

He nodded, thanking the medic as he got back up to his feet. The bottoms of his boots clanged against the hard metallic floor of the _Autumn's _primary mess hall.

The Master Chief shouldered his MA5A ICWS, making sure to click it into place on the magnetic holster embedded in the back plate of his armor. With his weapons loaded and within **reach, **the Chief maneuvered around the various alien corpses and weapons strewn along the floor. He pondered taking a plasma rifle, or, even better, the fallen Ultra's energy sword, but thought better of it once he realized they might well be depleted of any viable energy.

Trying desperately not to notice the several smudges of various, almost artistically chosen shades of blue and purple, the Master Chief continued onward. It was almost surreal, really: He had a computer in his brain, he had a rifle attached to his back, and there was blood everywhere –and the blood wasn't even red.

_Yeah. Colored blood. Pick your favorite flavor of blood. We've got Grunt Grape, Elite Apple, Berry Brute, Juicy Jackal, and Hunter Orange, _the Chief thought, somewhat sadistically.

For a few minutes, however, the hallways were relatively blood-free, much to the Master Chief's approval. Cortana, however, had to go and turn that into a bad thing.

"There's no blood…"

"Yeah, so?" the Chief said, "Isn't that a good thing? I mean, personally, that is a sign that we're winning. Or those Covie bastards haven't come this far yet."

"_Or _they're here right now….."

Sure enough, the Chief turned a corner, only to be faced with an Elite Minor.

_"Chief, we've got company!"_

The Chief didn't bother to reply to Cortana's pathetically obvious statement. Instead, he turned back around, backing up through the dark halls several meters to ready his rifle. Hoping the Elite hadn't noticed him, he crept forward, making sure to step as lightly as he could. Sadly, with the dead silence, anyone could hear a pin drop… or a SPARTAN step.

It turned out that Elites counted as part of anyone.

Several bursts of 7.62x51mm rounds flew through the air, illuminated by the flashes of the MA5A's muzzle. None made contact with their intended alien target, who danced around the bullets as if it were some twisted mockery of a ballerina, doing deadly pirouettes through the air as its fists flew at its SPARTAN foe.

The Master Chief waved his hand over the pistol grip of his rifle, using his thumb to tap the magazine release on the back. With a swift, fluid motion, he tossed the spent magazine to the ground, sliding in a fresh one. The LED ammunition counter on the receiver of his weapon blinked and changed from a glum '00' to a big, bright '32' in one fell swoop, as did the little blue icons on his visor light up. With a furious yell, the Master Chief unloaded the new magazine into the Elite, as little by little, its energy shields withered away. Not even paying attention to where he was aiming, he kept spraying until he was out.

The alien warrior growled, charging at the Chief with all its might. Its large hooves shattered two of the Master Chief's ribs with a horrific _crack. _Screaming in pain, the Chief fell to his knees.

He looked up and saw the Elite mouthing several indistinguishable foreign curses and swears.

He didn't want to know what it was saying. It was most likely mocking him, shouting the alien equivalent of a big fat "fuck you" straight at his face, laughing as he tore at the Master Chief's little scraps of honor- all without him even realizing it.

Cortana, however, did not hesitate to activate the MJOLNIR battlesuit's in-built translation software. The Elite's deep ramblings morphed into a variety of Earth languages, ranging from Hungarian to Italian to German and finally English, with which the Master Chief could hear:

_"Foul Demon! Your head is mine! I will gain so much from your corpse… Surely I will be made a Zealot, or a kaidon!"_

"So I'm a Demon, huh? Then I'll see you in Hell."

With the utterance of such a cheesy one-liner, the Master Chief picked himself up, his hands shaking and chest bleeding as he drew his M6D. Inserting his final magazine into the pistol, he kneed the Elite in the groin and tripped it. With a smile on his face, the Master Chief then picked up the Elite with one hand, shoving the muzzle of the M6D into the Elite's jaws with another.

The Master Chief was still covered in blood and gore (but he had since used bio-foam to heal his wounds) when he came across the three Marines standing guard by the hallway to Port Airlocks Gamma. In fact, he was covered with so much, the one of the Marines pointed at him in disgust when it was made apparent that there was an alien mandible stuck to his helmet.

_"Gentlemen._ What's your current status?"

The Marines hesitantly saluted the Chief, unsure of whether they should be relieved that there was a SPARTAN-II (And not just any SPARTAN-II, but the legendary Sierra-117) in the midst, or horrified at the mess on his armor.

The highest ranked soldier out of the three, Corporal Jonathan Morris, stepped forward. "Sir, we're doing okay. We just fought off one o' those split-chins when you showed up…. and it looks like you did some chin-splittin' of your own, sir…"

The Chief nodded, drawing his MA5A. "Any of you got any ammunition on you I could have?" (At the moment, Cortana felt a sense of pride in knowing she had taught the Master Chief a thing or two about asking for help when he needed it.)

"Yeah, I got plenty." Morris then handed the Chief three magazines for the MA5A. "Okay, so now what should we-"

Morris was cut off in the middle of his sentence when he was knocked to the ground by a sudden shaking of the ship.

_"What the hell? Did something just hit us?" questioned one of Morris' squadmates._

Getting back up to his feet and readying his rifle, Morris motioned to the airlock hall. "Move in! Back to the airlock!"

The Master Chief nodded, drawing his rifle as well and running behind Morris and his squad.

Morris and the Chief arrived just a moment too late- two Marines that had been standing guard by the airlock were thrown to the deck like ragdolls by a burst of bright blue plasma just as the set foot in the hallway. A boarding party, composed of several Grunts and a Skirmisher, jumped outside of the airlock. The Skirmisher opened fire with its Carbine, and several (somewhat radioactive) green projectiles found themselves rater close to the Chief's head –a little _too _close.

"Oh, you're dead now!" shouted Morris as he let loose a burst of rifle fire, killing two Grunts in the process. The Chief followed suit moments after, striking the Skirmisher in the torso.

The Skirmisher threw its Carbine forward, striking a Marine in the face as it charged at finished the Marine off with a kick to the face. Having dealt with one of its enemies, the Skirmisher then yanked a Plasma Pistol away from the iron grip of a Grunt's corpse, making sure to overcharge it.

The Master Chief looked on in horror from behind the flashes of his rifle's muzzle as Corporal Jonathan Morris was reduced to a charred, disfigured mess, read steam rising from his mangled head.

Only the Chief and one Marine remained, who then dispatched the Skirmisher with a swipe of his combat knife.

"Hell yeah! Eat it!" the Marine yelled. HE continued fending off the Grunts with his knife, drawing his M6G (the standard side arm for Marines –the D variant was only for special cases like SPARTANs or high-ranking officers, or spec-ops), and firing when they ran.

At the same time, the Chief was busy stepping over the multitudinous dead bodies strewn across the corridor in an attempt to get into the Covenant boarding craft and clear out any hidden threats. He looked upon the gleaming purple walls and the fourteen-foot clearance with a mixed feeling of awe and disappointment. While they were admittedly intricate and beautiful, Covenant-designed ships and vehicles were needlessly artistic and impractical. Though, there were the nearly twelve-foot-tall Hunters that the Covenant had to worry about fitting into the craft. "Cortana… are you getting any readings? Any life signs? Hostile FOF tags? Anything?"

As the Chief stepped into the small closet-like weapon storage bays on either side of the craft, he heard only silence over his TACCOM.

_Oh my god. How long does it take to scan a single boarding craft?_

_ …At least that Marine is doing okay._

_ He's probably having one hell of a time slaughtering Grunts._

_ Lucky bastard!_

**A/N: Sorry I ended the chapter early. I couldn't wait to get it out! This will be a two-part chapter? By the way, Chapter IV was an experiment in comic relief. That's why Chief cursed and stuff like that. Sorry. I was trying to improve my skills with comic relief. I can see now I failed horribly. It's cool. Also, no, the next chapter won't be a huge thing on exploring the boarding pod (I'm going to call those things 'Reapers' by the way, in keeping with the theme of Covenant vehicles being named after supernatural/magical beings. Also, I've decided to make a new weapon: The Energy Spreader! It's basically a plasma shotgun. It looks like a pump-action version of the Beam Rifle from Halo 2/3, mixed with the Mauler. IT's also blue, and more along the size of the Assault Rifle.**

**By the way… my portrayal of the Chief is as kind of an unwilling soldier, who actually is somewhat reluctant to fight, but will do anything to win and save humanity. (After all, he was kidnapped, he didn't sign up.) He's also trying to be somewhat of a role model for the Marines and be all tough and fearless, but in reality he's just as freaked out as everyone else.**

**And the reason why he says a lot of one-liners is because he picked up the habit from Johnson.**

**That is all.**

**So yeah. And please, tell me what you think of the other characters as well!**

**Chapter V, Part Two will be a kind of side-story that focuses on that Marine outside the boarding pod, and him trying to make his way off the POA…. But shorter. Every once in a while, I'll write a chapter that focuses on a different character, to give a better view of the story. So far, I've only planned one, and you can most likely guess what it'll be about by the title:**

"_**Devils… Monsters…"**_


	8. Never Burn Money II

_**CHAPTER V, PART TWO**_

"_**NEVER BURN MONEY"**_

_**A/N: Okay. I was sick of having not realsed the chapter. It's not done, so I made Capter V into a THREE-PARTER.**_

_**Please forgive me.**_

_**Had writer's block.**_

_**Will be posting Mass Effect drabble in meantime.**_

_**Blood Ties is on hiatus –lost my notebook. Again. Remember Metroid Fission? Same thing happened.**_

_**Never actually wrote that one.**_

_**Anyway… Next chapter (when I finally get to it) will depict the Chief getting Linda out of cryo and taking her along on his ADVENTUREEEEEEEEEEEE (I'm so sleepy right now).**_

_**Yeah, I know this sucks, and you probably think "WHAT THE FUCK CRIT. IT TOOK YOU FIVE ZILLION YRS TO RELEASE THISSSSS?"**_

_**Yeah, well, it's actually longer – I just didn't finish it and thought this would be a good place to post at least this much.**_

_**Honestly, I'll probably never finish **_**Combat Evovled. **_**But, hey… at least I'm trying!**_

_**Pray 2012 isn't the end. :D**_

_The Chief couldn't help but notice that the weapons bays on the boarding craft were surprisingly utilitarian compared to the rest of the craft._

_ Unlike the wide berth of the craft's main body, which was adorned with flashing lights and artistic lines; the weapons bays were littered with overly sharp corners and unpainted metal. It looked... dangerous._

Actually, upon closer inspection, it didn't look like it was even part of the craft... originally, anyway. There were scorch marks and bubbles in the metal where it looked like the weapons bays had been.. welded on? That could explain its unpainted state, but the general aesthetic wasn't like that of the Elite-designed Covenant technology.

The Chief was curious now. However, he wasn't able to discern what was going on, so he asked the one person who could.

"Cortana, are you there?" There was only silence, minus the sound of a Grunt being shot in the head just outside the boarding pod. "Cortana... what are you doing? What's taking so long?"

Still no response The only sounds to be heard were the apparent dying screams of a Marine. _It's not like she could have gotten lost, _thought the Chief. _I mean, she's a program. She can't leave. Can she?_

The Chief whacked his helmet in frustration.

"What the hell was that?" Cortana said.

"That was me waking you up."

Silence flooded the TACCOM once more for a minute. "I wasn't asleep. I was scanning. And... Do you realize where we are?"

"No, but it might as well be a tomb. There's so many dead things..."

"Quite. Actually, this is the airlock. More specifically, Lifeboat Airlock Oh-Two-Three. Do you know what that means, John?"

"No," the Chief said, not questioning how Cortana knew his birth name (which only his fellow SPARTANS, Johnson, and Halsey knew).

"It _means_ that the Covenant are using our lifeboat airlocks to attach their boarding parties!"

The Chief stood there for a moment, still inspecting the weapons bay. He either hadn't been paying attention, or didn't get it.

Cortana sighed. "They go out, we come in!" she simplified.

Clever bastards. But the Chief had no time to worry about how the Covenant were getting onto the ship.. he just had to kill them.

"Okay, great," he said, changing the subject. "We know how they're getting in. But it doesn't matter how if I don't have a weapon to kill them with!"

"Look inside the crate behind you. I'm detecting weapons-grade energy signatures."

The Chief turned around, where he saw a bulbous purple object standing about five feet tall. It didn't seem to have any seams or openings... just a large glowing blue display with a two-thumbed hand print on it.

The Chief fired at the display, causing the crate to open somewhat. Inside was a long purple object with a pump and a glowing green drum magazine at the back end near the stock. He picked up the device, wrapping his index finger around what looked to be its trigger.

"Is this that weapon you were talking about?"

"Yes."

"So what does it do?"

"It APPEARS to work work with a nitrogen-lined, magnetized cell of liquid plasma loaded into the weapon. When the firing mechanism is activated, a portion of the plasma in the cell is injected into the barrel of the weapon, where it is quickly heated to its gaseous form. The barrel is made of a heat-resistant material so as not to melt down. The back of the barrel is lined with an electromagnet, which is given a negative charge when the firing mechanism is activated, repelling the gas and pushing it out of the muzzle of the weapon in a deadly arc of pure plasma energy. At least... that's who I think it might work. It's only observations based on logic and our current knowledge of plasma."

"So... what does it do?"

"It's a plasma shotgun."

The Chief nodded as he slung the weapon over his shoulder and left the boarding craft.

When he exited the craft, he noticed that last marine was dead. Ironically, it looked as though a Grunt had stolen his knife and stabbed him in the face.

The mixture of dried Human, Elite, and **Grunt blood almost looked like confetti** with its rainbow of colors. It was incredibly morbid, but at the same time the Chief knew that he might well have just saved the life of another Marine; a thought which caused a small grin to appear on his face. Perhaps the Grunts had been chasing down someone, and he had bought that person time to get away and survive, or maybe even to bear children who would live on to win the war.

In fact, when he though about it for a moment, the Chief could have sworn that when he heard the Grunt being shot in the face, he also could hear **a faint, haunting laughter.**

Wiping the sadistic thoughts from his mind, the Chief pulled the combat knife from the dead Marine's face and continued his journey.


End file.
